Nine Schools Break $200K Total Cost Barrier

Three years ago, NYU Stern was the first school to break the $200K barrier in total cost for an MBA. File photo

NO SCHOOL POSTED A DECREASE IN TOTAL COST BETWEEN 2016 AND 2017

Most of the most-expensive MBA programs are at private schools, including all of the top nine. But No. 10, UCLA’s Anderson School, is not only the most-expensive public school, it also saw the biggest increase in cost by percentage, rising 13.6% from $170,982 last year to $194,220 — just a shade under that $200K threshold. Other schools with big increases include Wharton (9% to $218,900), Duke Fuqua (9.6% to $184,476, one year after actually posting a decline in total cost), and Harvard (8.5% to $213,600). After Anderson, the next costliest public is UC-Berkeley Haas, which saw a 7.6% increase to $183,342.

No school in the Top 25 posted a decrease in total cost, though Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business came closest, rising 2.3% to $141,920. Most of the schools that saw small increases in total cost — less than 3% — were on the bottom end of the Top 25 list, and therefore more affordable, such as the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business (2.4%, to $152,850), Notre Dame Mendoza (2.9%, to $146,576), and Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management (2.6%, to $179,508). However, one high-cost school, MIT Sloan, also saw only a modest jump in total cost: 2.6%, from $196,028 last year to $201,028.

Indiana Kelley’s total cost increase was the most modest and the school itself is the cheapest in the Top 25, thanks to the lowest annual tuition ($47,127) and the low estimate of what it costs to live for a year in Bloomington, Indiana ($12,708). Even better would be to get in-state tuition, which would drop the total cost of a two-year MBA to just $100,196 — or half the cost of any of the top nine schools. It’s a fun game to play: What is the in-state cost versus the out-of-state at the next-cheapest school, the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business? $113,068 versus $146,028. But at Anderson, the costliest public school, it’s hardly worth the trouble of getting a California driver’s license: $190,862 in-state versus $194,220 out-of-state, a savings of less than $4,000.

The MIT and Columbia room and board numbers are hilarious. Completely unrealistic.

elite

The best is to study do an MBA in Europe or India or Canada or Hong Kog for 1/10th the price join MBB or big banks in London/Hong Kong/Mumbai etc,,,and transfer to the US, you will save 200K and make the same as a US MBA MBB and many banks routinely transfer non US MBA’s to their US offices why are the US business schools not protesting this BS? when their own schools are being overlooked for cheaper options